Brian Williams Shouldn't Have Been Valorized to Begin With

By Chad Nelson

For the last twelve years, NBC’s Brian Williams has been publicly recounting a story about being aboard a U.S. Army helicopter in Iraq. Williams was covering the Iraq War on the first day of the American invasion, traveling with the Army’s 159th Aviation Regiment. According to Williams, his helicopter was struck by an Iraqi RPG forcing it to make a dangerous emergency landing. Williams has told the story in multiple venues, each time relating the harrowing story of what it feels like to come under enemy assault and to fear possible death. The problem with Williams’ story is that it’s not factually correct.

It’s true Williams was aboard an Army helicopter on that first day of the American invasion, just not the one that took RPG fire. After apologizing for misremembering the incident, Williams admitted that while he was part of the four-part unit, one of which took Iraqi fire, his wasn’t the one that took a direct hit. His was behind the one hit. As the story evolves, other Army personnel have said that Williams was in an entirely separate helicopter unit traveling in the other direction. The pilot of Williams’ helicopter has said it did take fire, but only from Iraqi AK-47s. With the details still being sorted out, one thing is clear—Brian Williams is no longer deserving of the public valor heaped upon him for his supposed war heroics.

The problem with labeling Brian Williams, or any other journalist or soldier who comes under attack during war a hero, is that it glamorizes war’s senseless violence. War between feuding governments is insidious and deserving only of scorn. Invading forces who are attacked or injured during a war as mad as George W. Bush’s Iraqi excursion are no more deserving of the gallantry attributed to them than the loser of a drunken barroom brawl.

Here in America, unfortunately, we live in a perverted reality tunnel within which this senseless violence must be celebrated at all costs, regardless of your views of the war itself. Bravery, courage, and honor still manage to apply to those foolish enough to volunteer in even the dumbest and bloodiest of wars. Injured soldiers and war correspondents receive parades, medals, and endless public praise, no matter the circumstances that led to their injury.

American war culture is a sickness. By making heroes of those who come under return-attack during an aggressive war, we ignore the incredible destruction they bring about in the process. Ron Paul got into hot water in the wake of Chris Kyle’s death when he tweeted about Kyle that “those who live by the sword die by the sword.” It’s a saying all the more applicable to active duty troops. For one should hardly expect anything less than serious injury or death when he or she ventures out to deliver the same fate to a foreign people.

By celebrating the wartime acts of the individuals involved, even where the war itself is almost wholly lacking in public support, the American public reveal themselves as pawns of the warmongers. Backlash against the warmongers becomes all the more difficult where the warmonger can deflect all criticism as “harmful to the troops”. Let’s face it, there’s nothing inherently good about traveling abroad to kill people for your government. Remove this trump card from the politicians’ pockets and they’ll have a much tougher sell the next time they decide to engage in such global terror.

Chad Nelson is an attorney based out of Providence, RI and is Assistant Editor at Antiwar.com and a Contributor at Center For a Stateless Society (c4ss.org). You can find him on Twitter @cnels43.

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I think it is fair to say that most of the nation’s finest are in the military to serve their country. I personally view the “country” and the “federal government” as two entirely different entities. Sadly, it is the federal government that decides where senseless wars are fought and who will fight them. To my knowledge, in recent decades anyway, there has never been a public referendum on whether the US should go to war. Perhaps there should be, but I doubt the military industrial establishment and their lobbyists would approve.